The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs by James P. Blaylock

east into the sun,” the message read. “Across the road and some two miles farther on, you’ll find the coal pits, which Tubby Frobisher tells us consumes a considerable acreage. It’s his invaluable knowledge of the area that I depend on here. The path that skirts the pits will come out of the forest directly behind the Old Coach Inn, Blackboys, where Tubby and Jack will be waiting. If I’m taken, my guess is that it’ll be to Beachy Head. Narbondo’s goal is ransom, not murder, although murder might follow the ransom, as it often does. If you’re reading this, then I’m no longer the captain of my fate. Adieu, Alice.”
    That was the long and the short of it, although the “adieu” was preceded by another profession of his love, as if the first wasn’t convincing. There was an irony at work here. Alice had been driven mad by the machinations of a human monster, and St. Ives had rushed impetuously into danger to rescue her. Now their roles were reversed, and it was Alice’s turn to play the hero, for she wouldn’t be talked into returning home to Chingford under any circumstances, despite both Tubby and I bringing the cannons of logic to bear upon her flank, so to speak. Alice had a single contentious desire, and that was to find St. Ives and to bring him out of bondage alive.
    The mention of the fortified emerald brought up more questions than it answered, so we left Alice to read the note that John Gunther had brought to us that morning, and set out down the hallway to fetch our bags. In a little over an hour there was a southward-bound mail coach that would take us on into Dicker, and the three of us were determined to be on it. We would spend the night at Tubby’s uncle’s house, find Alice some suitable accoutrements, and lay out our plan. However it fell out, the three of us would not go quite so impetuously into the environs of Beachy Head as St. Ives had gone into Heathfield.



Chapter 7
     
    Ransom

     
    It took but a moment to ready ourselves for the trip south. The coach sat in the yard, the coachman eating his supper inside. We had forty minutes of waiting, and were determined not to stand idle. There was no telling what we would find at Beachy Head or along the way, but it might easily be further outbreaks of madness, in which case we wanted for asbestos caps, which meant paying the Tipper’s residence a visit. Tubby insisted that with a little luck we might manage to burn his shack to the ground, but Alice wasn’t keen on the idea of gambling away the higher stakes by engaging in irrelevant pleasures, nor was she keen on remaining at the inn while Tubby and I went off on the errand. The Tipper wouldn’t be there, we assumed. Surely he wouldn’t be so brazen as to return to Blackboys, knowing that Alice had escaped and that the two of us waited at the inn.
    We went out then, the night blessedly dry and with a shred of moonlight. In the stable we found our young friend helping the coach horses to bags of oats. He leapt up like a jack-in-the-box when he saw us and asked could he be of service. Perhaps Tubby had given him a half crown, for he was singularly anxious to oblige us. We asked merely that he describe the Tipper’s shack, which he did with particular care.
    “It’s a low hovel of a place,” he said, “that sits alone at the bottom of the road near the forest. There’s a pile of old trash you’ll see alongside, and the door is half a-hanging. One of the great rusty hinges is broke-like, and the top of the door is fixed with a hook and eye. It’s a lazy man’s dodge, and a bloke could find his way in easy enough by setting a pry bar into the gap or knocking out that hook.”
    “I see that you’re a sharp one, Mr. Gunther,” Tubby said, giving him a wink. “Will you do us another service now?” The boy replied that he would, anything we required, all the time goggling at Alice. “Don’t mention at all that we’ve been round talking to you,” Tubby told him. “And if